years ago when we were asked to plan a conference, the annual conference of the american political science association, which even now -- certainly then is very austere and trickish and boring event, and we try to. it up a little bit. we had a lot of good ideas. none of which i will mention until the cameras are shut off. [laughter] and i want to say, it was adjust lot of fun to work with ben. when i told them when the ideas were it, it will improve your -- [inaudible] [laughter] so ben has a point of view about how to save the world because the world is in a kind of planet, as we know it, and our country as we know it, is in big trouble. and those troubles include the ecological crisis that we hear about all the time and go about our daily life just as we did before, as if there will be a tomorrow and a tomorrow and tomorrow but there might not be. those troubles include widening spiraling inequality. they include the erosion of the infrastructure of democratic governance but the structure of living together that means the infrastructure of transportation and utilities, the networks that